WALTHAM – Gerald Wallace tends not to worry about magazines or websites setting low expectations for the Boston Celtics. And the small forward has a very logical, pretty awesome reason for it.

“If it ain’t on the Xbox, I don’t read it,” he said. “I couldn’t tell you nothing about it. I don’t read newspapers, none of that.”

After the conversation turned naturally to Wallace’s video game habits (more on that below), the 31-year old admitted that – despite not reading much – he still feels disrespect headed the Celtics’ way. And he has huddled some of his younger teammates to tell them his theory.

“I told the guys we’re like a sleeper team. We’re that team that everybody’s looking on their schedule like, ‘Okay, we can get a win. We can rest. This might be a night off for us,’” he said. “We’re going to surprise some guys and do some things that – you know, we’re going to catch a lot of teams off guard. A lot of teams that aren’t going to be expecting … all we have to do is come out and give our effort, and at the end of the season, we’ll see how we put ourselves. And see where we go from there.”

Wallace is no stranger to rebuilding teams. His fourth season was spent with the expansion Charlotte Bobcats, who lost 64 times. During Wallace’s first four years with the team, they averaged 55 defeats for a grand total of 219. In his final full season there, he led the Bobcats to the 2009-10 playoffs, which still marks the only time the organization has reached the postseason.

But Wallace believes opponents will disrespect Boston like they treated Charlotte during the early years – the really bad years.

“Same thing. Especially the first year in the expansion draft, it was the same situation. Half of the guys on the team, nobody in the league even knew,” he said. “That was the main thing. They’d look at us, see us as an easy win: ‘That’s a day off on the schedule right there, that’s an easy game. We can automatically count that win.’ We’re not going to get, at least not from the start, 100 percent of their game. And then some teams we are, because they’re going to try to come out and put us out early. Our main thing is, we just have to stay focused, concentrate on what we’re doing as a team and just continue to get better.”

Before I spend too much time trying to determine exactly what Wallace meant while comparing his current team to the expansion Bobcats, whose three leading scorers were Emeka Okafor, Primoz Brezec and Kareem Rush, I’ll direct this conversation elsewhere.

Stevens believes players can use external motivation to an extent, but the most lasting power comes from within*. Telling reporters some of his Butler teams were picked to finish in the bottom half of the Horizon League, Stevens said challenges arise whether expectations are high or low.

But, he said, “the biggest challenge is just getting the team to play well together.”

“They know what people are saying. I know what people are saying. You can use that as motivation for a week maybe, but then you have to just get to be good,” said the coach. “You have to make yourself do the little things to be good. You can use it as a chip on your shoulder, and I think that most of these guys will do that. We’ve talked about that in certain circumstances, but it can’t be a major part of your every day. It has to be more about, ‘Hey, there’s a lot of little things that go on in the game to try to help you win, and that’s what you focus on.’”

So maybe the following bit on defense is far more important than any talk about low outside expectations:

“I think our main thing right now is we want to over-help defensively,” said Wallace. “We want to kind of force teams to beat us off jump shots; we don’t want to give up layups and dunks and lose that way. If they can beat us off jump shots, it’s just something we have to live with. But we have to learn to protect each other and over-protect each other right now.”

*Note: I immediately wanted to remove that “lasting power comes from within” line because I hated myself for writing it, but I thought I would remind you I could write a corny super-hero movie nobody would ever watch.

Wallace on Xbox

As promised, a little more on Wallace's video game habits.

"I don’t play basketball games on Xbox," he said. "I do it for a living. I’m not going to go home and play it for another two hours. Ain't no way.”

Apparently mistaken by Wallace's low voice, which he said often reminds people of Barry White's (seriously), I initially thought the small forward said 10 hours. That's a lot of video gaming, though, so it probably makes more sense at two. Especially after a laughing reporter asked whether Wallace actually spent that much time playing Xbox, to which he replied, "Yeah, basically."

Because of Wallace's self-imposed basketball video games ban, he does not check what type of skills his video game character possesses. But his children update him.

"They let me know if (the video game company) got it right or they got it wrong," Wallace said before explaining his kids' input. "It depends on how they’re feeling about the game. If they’re feeling good about it, then I’m pretty good. If not they just create me, do it their own selves."